announcements
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Stephen announced that he will be dropping his first book with the Image Books imprint of Penguin Random House.
Since he’s tired of explaining what it’s going to be about, he’s resorted to just telling people this:
latest pod
Steven Christoforou joins the pod to talk about Orthobros, internet Orthodoxy, Charles Taylor, cradle ethnic Orthodox, and other Orthodox things. Listen on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.
pomo people elsewhere
Santiago Ramos argues that the boldest part of Pope Leo’s encyclical is not about AI—it’s about war, in Commonweal.
Emmett Rensin on the skeptics of medicalized psychiatry in The Lamp.
Stephen
wrote a work of cultural anthropology [hot takes] about his EuroTrip 2026 in no pomo.
joined Juan Manuel Martínez and Juan Merchan on the Matiz podcast to talk about the evils of air conditioning, Baudrillard’s preference for America over Europe, the Worldwide Latina Belt, and other riveting topics. Listen here.
from the archives
Over the last few weeks, people have been debating the ethics of air conditioning. If you couldn’t already tell, I think air conditioning is evil.
Surely, I’m only doing this as a bit. I don’t actually think you’re in a state of mortal sin for using AC. But I personally prefer fans over AC, and if you’re going to use AC, I’d prefer you put it on very lightly and don’t blast it. It’s bad for my respiratory system and my intestines. I truly enjoyed getting a respite from AC while traveling in the Motherlands, where an open window and fan get the job done.
For more about why I hate AC, check out this throwback from The Blaze:
Baudrillard goes so far as to say that we seek nothing less than the “air-conditioning of life,” a state in which everything is processed, consumed, and “at last digested and turned into the same homogeneous faecal matter.” Cory Doctorow’s memorable term for this is “ens**ttification.” Perhaps that explains my volatile digestive system.
The late Pope Francis singled out our obsession with climate control in his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’.”: “People may well have a growing ecological sensitivity,” he notes, “but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more. A simple example is the increasing use and power of air-conditioning.”
It’s a shame that Pope Francis didn’t go farther in his condemnation of air conditioning, choosing instead to focus on vices like tobacco (the sale of which he banned in the Vatican) and the Tridentine Latin Mass.